A millionaire Republican senator repeatedly sued patients who could not pay their medical bills and had dozens of them hauled off in handcuffs, according to a bombshell report.
Kansas lawmaker Roger Marshall spent decades as an obstetrician-gynecologist before entering politics. During that career, he filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills, according to a New York Times analysis of Kansas court records.
Patients were arrested in 81 of those cases after missing court dates, the records show, and in 13 additional lawsuits, his lawyers sought warrants, though it is unclear whether an arrest followed.
One of those arrests happened over Easter weekend in 2007, when police showed up at Joe Vasquez’s rural Kansas home. The doctor had sued him and his wife over an unpaid $4,561 bill from her emergency hysterectomy three years earlier, the Times reported. They had missed a court date. Police took the couple into custody as their grandchildren got ready for an egg hunt, Vasquez said. They spent two days in jail before their son could scrape together bond money.
“We had no money to pay,” said Vasquez, now 68.
Marshall’s firm also garnished patients’ paychecks and bank accounts and routinely charged 18 percent annual interest on the debts, which ranged from several thousand dollars down to as little as $101.
Most of the patients lived in Barton County, a rural stretch of the state with above-average poverty and uninsured rates.
Kellie Clutts was sued in 2015 over a $129 charge from a postpartum visit, filed when her daughter was 9 months old. Marshall’s firm eventually garnished her bank account.
“I had every intention to pay, I was just struggling,” Clutts, 45, said. “I was recently divorced, trying to do everything on my own. I told them I could make partial payments, but it seemed like no matter what I said, they wanted the full amount at once.”
Meischa Zimmerman was arrested three times. She was sued over a $3,596 delivery bill and set up a $50 monthly payment plan, but fell behind at times. With 18 percent interest piling on, she recalled being told the debt had ballooned past $7,000.
“I had to choose whether I’d pay my electricity or pay $50 to a doctor who didn’t need it,” Zimmerman said.
A spokeswoman for Marshall, Payton Fuller, said he “spent decades caring for patients regardless of their ability to pay” and noted that “judges issue warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors.”
Court records tell a different story about who was asking for those warrants, the Times reported. Marshall’s own lawyers repeatedly requested them, arguing in dozens of briefs that arrests were necessary over patients’ “refusal to obey Court orders.”
Steven Johnson, a lawyer who often represented Marshall in the debt cases, said Marshall was “no different” from his other clients and was not involved in decisions to seek warrants or garnishments—though he did sign off on the 18 percent interest rate.
Marshall’s office did not respond to request for comment.
Marshall, who quit a town hall last year after a grilling from constituents, stopped practicing medicine after winning his House seat in 2016, but some collection efforts continued into his time in Congress, the Times reported.
Both his Senate and campaign websites still brand him “Doc Marshall,” and a 2020 campaign ad declared, “For 5,000 Kansans, life began here, in the trusted hands of Dr. Marshall.”
His latest financial disclosure lists his current worth between $3 million and $9.8 million.
